


Divided We Fall

by dustbunnyprophet, Elle_Nahiara



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Character Death, Drama, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Language, Romance, Slow Burn, not JJ or Seung Gil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-05 23:27:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11588364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustbunnyprophet/pseuds/dustbunnyprophet, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elle_Nahiara/pseuds/Elle_Nahiara
Summary: Seung Gil landed in Oshima on the fringe of a storm. Another soldier ready to join one of the oldest Shatterdomes. Ready to fight the kaiju, and show his worth.JJ lived for the rush of the moment. The thrill of the fight, the shiver travelling down his spine, the deafening roar of a Jumphawk rotor, only they could silence his ghosts.They were both soldiers, but neither was ready for what the future had in store.Some storms were not meant to be braved alone.





	1. The Shatterdome

**Author's Note:**

> We chose to go with Kubo-chan's nickname of Masumi-san for Chris' boyfriend.

 

The waves crashed loudly against the outer walls of the Shatterdome. The seawater slid down the reinforced concrete, painting it a darker grey and almost swallowing the wide black stripes used to mark the sea level. JJ leaned his elbows on the steel railing of the gangway that connected the helipad to one of the auxiliary entrances used for maintenance. He lifted his head and looked towards the empty helicopter landing. It’d been awhile since he had last used it. His Jumphawk was sleeping snug inside the Shatterdome along with all her sisters. Not that the upcoming storm would do her much harm. The V-50 Jumphawks were as sturdy as the Jaegers they transported. The harsh wind that carried a fine mist of seawater in JJ’s face would barely graze her. But Jaegers were useless without their Jumphawks to deploy them, so no one was willing to risk the choppers’ safety.

The thunderclouds that darkened the horizon were looming closer, and JJ saw the flash of lightning in the distance. He drummed his fingers on the railing, thinking of the odds of a kaiju attack in the next hour. According to the clock and Dr. Giacometti’s predictions, they were clear for at least a fortnight. And while it made everyone breathe easier, JJ almost wished the Swiss mathematician was wrong. There was something heady about flying through a storm, with the weight of a Jaeger pulling at the harness on his Jumphawk. It almost reminded him of the adrenaline rush before Conn-Pod deployment, back when he had still been a Ranger. It was the fight or flight instinct that would kick in, and in those moments when the wind whipped with brute force at the side of his helicopter, and the harness swung dangerously underneath the aircraft, that JJ felt truly alive.

He inhaled a lungful of cold sea air, and closed his eyes for a moment. The waves lapping at the Shatterdome seemed louder somehow in the darkness behind his lids, and it was a sound threatening enough to alert the lizard part of his brain and make his heart pick up speed. JJ felt his lips curl in a slow grin. It was not braving a storm with nothing but the hull of his chopper between him and the blasts of wind and rain, but it made his stomach contract, and his skin shiver. Even if it was just a morsel, it was better than starving. Better than sitting in his dorm, or wandering aimlessly through the base, just waiting, endlessly waiting, and growing complacent with each passing day. Letting himself be lulled by the quiet between attacks, only to have it ripped away from him when the alarm started blaring through the Shatterdome.

It was better to be on edge, always walking on the brink, muscles taut and mind sharp. Always ready to pull his jumpsuit on and run to the cockpit of his baby. Ready to jump into the fray.

The waves kept crashing and the wind howled, but JJ’s ear caught a faint whirring sound that had not been here a moment before and he opened his eyes, scanning the leaden sky for the source of it. A dark dot was coming from the West where the island of Honshu was just a darker smudge in the thick curtain of thunderclouds. JJ followed the approaching helicopter, a twin rotor one by the sound of it. There was a light drizzle falling on the well worn leather of his jacket, but he kept his position on the gangplank, curious about the unexpected chopper which was getting closer and closer. He was nowhere near the LOCCENT chain of command, but the Oshima Shatterdome did not get visitors often, so all personnel was usually aware through the grapevine whenever they had guests or new recruits scheduled to arrive. And JJ had heard nothing of the CH-47 which was approaching their base.

The rain was starting to fall in earnest, but JJ was curious, and just when he started to wonder if it would be wiser to get back inside, the main gates opened, and Lt. Babicheva walked out with a large umbrella shielding her from what was promising to become a downpour within minutes. Her bright red hair was flying in all directions as the wind ruffled it, but the second-in command held her ground with that military efficiency the Russian officers seemed to posses. Only the Japanese members of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps were more stern than them. And JJ counted their lucky stars they got a Russian Marshall as well. A couple of his fellow Jumphawk pilots had served in the Hasetsu base before moving to Oshima, and the rumours about the strictness of Marshall Okukawa were legendary.

JJ’s thoughts were interrupted by the deafening noise of the helicopter’s landing, and he watched the rain spray around the helipad while the rotors began to slow down. A moment later the Lieutenant was approaching the chopper while the door opened. A dark clad man walked out of the helicopter, followed by a dog. Lt. Babicheva moved forward, uselessly trying to shield him from the rain with her bright magenta umbrella. JJ could not see much of the newcomer, only that he was unsurprisingly taller than the short Russian officer and that his hair was black and long enough to be completely tousled by the wind which still blew strongly.

A stiff salute, and then the three of them were walking back towards the Shatterdome entrance, trying to escape the cold rain which fell in earnest. JJ was thoroughly soaked, and there was nothing more to see now that the helicopter preparing to take off, so in a few quick strides he made for the side door. And entered.

 

The doors slid closed behind them and Mila closed her umbrella, hanging it over her forearm. She watched the dog shake the water off its fur, before coming to stand next to its owner who was looking at her expectantly. With a short nod she strode towards the elevators, the newest recruit in tow. The Korean man they had sent them, fresh from the Seoul Jaeger Academy, was silently following her quick strides through the shiny tarmac of the first level. They neared the elevators, and Mila pressed the button, glancing at the silent cadet. His black hair was all in disarray, but in spite of the traces of rain on his uniform, the man was standing in a pristine stance, back ramrod straight, and legs slightly parted. His dog had sat down, but its posture mirrored the owner’s.

Mila decided to bide her time and see how to act with him. She considered herself a good judge of character, but in the brief introduction she had been given she had not been able to discern anything about the newest addition to their J-Tech division. Except maybe for the fact her usual playfulness would not do. She had read the file of course, Seung Gil Lee was a 25 years old aspiring ranger with a solid background in Neuroscience, which was the main reason they had picked him. Masumi-san was the only fully trained Neural Bridge Operator, and it was a gamble they could not afford, especially with the increased frequency of kaiju attacks. If something were to happen to the Swiss they would be left hanging. There had been more in the Korean’s file, but none that revealed much about his character.

It was more than curiosity on Mila’s part. In spite of the Marshall’s legendary temper, the overall atmosphere in the Oshima Shatterdome was more lax than in any of the other bases Mila had served before, and yet they worked as a perfectly oiled machine. It was the peculiar camaraderie they had developed which made them one of the bases with one of the highest kill counts. It transcended rank and seniority. After all, at the end of the day the only thing that counted was how good they were at doing their job. They had all the same goal - defeating the kaiju and saving human lives. And they did it well. Their base had been keeping Tokyo and the whole of Honshu safe for the past decade, and along with the Hasetsu Shatterdome they had allowed the Japanese and Koreans to sleep more peacefully than most Pacific countries could.

The sudden ping of the elevator drew Mila out of her musings. She waited for the doors to slide open, and she stepped in the large car. Lee followed her, and the grate on the floor clacked loudly under his dog’s paws. Growing exponentially more aware of the silence, a small smile curved her lips while he pressed the button for the J-Tech floor. She was thankful for something to say.

“How is it called?” she asked the Korean while the elevator made its way into the bowels of the Shatterdome.

“What?” Lee looked at her with a blank expression, voice only slightly inflecting with puzzlement.

“The dog.” Mila clarified “What’s its name?”

“Why do you care?” the Korean asked in lieu of a reply, and Mila found herself blinking. It would have been rude in earnest if it hadn’t been for the genuine curiosity she could perceive in the slight shift of his posture.

“I like dogs.” she told him, adding a shrug and a smile that she aimed towards the Siberian Husky who was eyeing her with the same intensity as its owner.

“Miso.” Lee said after a beat. “Her name is Miso.”

Mila nearly missed it, but for a second there was the tiniest softening in the Korean’s expression. The dog’s ears perked at the mention of her name, but Miso stayed put, sitting next to her owner and almost mirroring his military stance.

The elevator kept travelling down, passing sublevel after sublevel, until they reached the J-Tech floor. The doors slid open and Mila walked out of the car, motioning for Lee and Miso to follow her. Sublevel 15 was busier than the any other floor in the Shatterdome. Mila and her two silent followers wove through the various technicians in jumpsuits which were running the routine maintenance on the Jaegers. She nodded in their direction when she passed them by, and they greeted her back in the same fashion, too busy to salute. As they worked their way to the NBO’s office, Mila’s ears picked the faint sound of music filtering through the door of one of the offices.

Lee seemed to frown at the music, and she stifled a chuckle. She was now sure he was not used to the lax way they were used to deal with things in Oshima. The J-Tech personnel were a particularly rowdy bunch, with only the Rangers outdoing them in sheer insubordination and blatant disregard of rules. The Marshall was going to pop a vein one of these days, what with the penchant for drama of Ranger Popovich or the angry episodes of Ranger Plisetsky, not that the Crispino twins were any better.

As they got closer to Masumi-san’s office, the music grew louder, and Mila was fairly sure she had heard that piece before. It was an opera their resident Neural Bridge Operator often listened to. Classical music was not her cup of tea, but it fit the neuroscientist’s demeanour.

The baritone’s voice rose just as they reached the glass door.

 

 _Füllt milder Hauch aus euerm Mund mein Segel nicht, so geht zugrund mein Plan,_ the voice sang, with a strong vibrato, and the brass swelled. _Gentle breath of yours, my Sails must fill, or else my project fails._ Well, he could relate, Masumi thought, feeling his lips curl in a wry smile, as he readjusted the optical cable on the spinal clamp. It was the newest generation, sleek in design, and more receptive than the older models. And after a little over a year of usage it should have been working perfectly.

Masumi considered himself a calm person, being fonder of classical music and good wine than of losing his temper and yelling at his fellow technicians, but the sheer negligence of allowing the deterioration of the synaptic circuits tested his patience. Was it so hard to make sure everything was in perfect order? Exact to the nanometer? _Especially_ the spinal clamps? He shook his head. It was like the boys working on this didn’t have millions of lives in their hands, or as if they had somehow forgotten.

He understood that the prototype spinal clamps Ragers Altin and Plisetsky were equipped with used next generation neural technology, and that he was probably the only person in the Oshima base who had the necessary knowledge to handle them, never mind it was not his job in the first place, being the Neural Bridge Operator, and not one of the techs, but maybe they should have asked for Masumi’s help _before_ shit had hit the fan.

Mark V Jaegers, like the infamously named “Potya” who was co-piloted by Altin and Plisetsky, were state of the art in terms of neural response. The lag between the pilots’ neural output and the Jaeger’s response had been reduced to 197 femtoseconds, which was roughly the same amount of time it took for the receptors in the human retina to react to light. The speed of the neural response made _any_ disharmony in neural data, no matter how minute, unacceptable, and a _nanosecond_ of difference between the inputs coming from the two pilots’ spinal clamp was a recipe for disaster. A _million_ femtoseconds of delay! How was it possible that nobody noticed this before?

With a shake of his head Masumi thanked whatever power above that TYO-21 “Rusalka” was almost dead when “Potya” got stuck in mid motion,  and that the Mark IV Jaeger “Sleeping Prince” had been close enough to give the fatal blow to the kaiju. Because the alternative would have been much worse than having to deal with a pissed off Ranger Altin and an _exponentially_ pissed off Ranger Plisetsky.

A sudden knock distracted him from his thoughts, followed by the sight of Lt. Babicheva’s red hair.

“Come in,” he said, not sparing her much of a glance until he saw she was accompanied.

He had been expecting new people, but somehow, no one had informed him that they would arrive _today_.

The scratching of paws made Masumi look down.

“Keep that dog away from the cables,” he said, sternly, but more out of concern for the animal than out of dislike for it. The man who was accompanying the Lieutenant quickly gestured to the door, and the dog went to stand by it.

Masumi resumed working.

“I assume this is the man you recruited.” he observed and Lt. Babicheva nodded enthusiastically.

The man’s - Seung Gil Lee, wasn’t it?- only confirmation was his lack of a negative response. Not one for introduction and chatter, it seemed. That was alright. Unlike, for example, Lt. Babicheva, Masumi wasn’t much of a talker, and whatever desire to converse he had, he often saved it for when he was back at their quarters, even though those moments were getting scarcer as kaiju attacks became more frequent. And they would continue like that, if Chris’ calculations were right. Which they were. They always were.

“Dr. Giacometti-” Lee spoke, finally.

“We call him Masumi-san,” Lt. Babicheva nudged Lee, who seemed to be startled and not very appreciative of her familiar gesture. She, in turn, looked as if she was considering her actions.

With a small smile playing at his lips, Masumi nodded.

“Indeed. Dr. Giacometti is my husband.”

Lee seemed to not be thrilled of even that slight bit of personal information being shared.

“Anyway,” he said, walking towards the Jaeger parts, “those synaptic transceivers are not aligned, the feedback cradle won’t be able to pick data properly.”

Masumi narrowed his eyes at that. It took a keen eye to notice that at a glance.

“I’m aware of that.” he bit out, not masking his annoyance “Which is why I’m fixing them.”

Lee simply nodded in reply, and Masumi felt as if he was back in Geneva, for a moment. And not in the good way. He felt like he was the one being tested, and it was grating on his nerves. But he tried to stifle down the irritation. He was used to the way new recruits often behaved. They had their egos inflated by the fact they had been selected for a Shatterdome, and didn’t realize all of the others residents had been chosen as well at some point.

But even as he dismissed the Korean man as one of those recruits, he couldn’t help noticing there was something more to Seung Gil Lee’s glance. It was not merely condescendence, but distrust.

That wouldn’t do in such a place.

Lt. Babicheva, as she often did, seemed to want to defuse the situation, so she spoke up.

“Well, you can help out, can’t you?”

Lee seemed a strange mix between angry and pleased. He took a step forward.

“Excuse me.” he said curtly, and Masumi ceded him his chair, coming to stand behind Lee to watch him work.

It took only a few seconds to realize that what this man lacked in interpersonal ability, he made up with in technical skill. His hands were quicker and more graceful than Masumi’s own, and yet precise as they danced under the large magnifying lens which made the tiny circuits inside the spinal clamp visible. Masumi had no doubt that when the next kaiju came, they were not going to suffer the same distress as when Rusalka had attacked.

He nodded and smiled, again, the slightest of smiles as Lee moved away from his work, a couple of minutes later.

“It’s done,” Lee announced, standing up and crouching for a moment to pet his dog.

Masumi, having realized politeness was not an option, talked even though Lee could hear him.

“Well, that was something.” Following that, he went towards the Jaeger. “But it’s never wrong to check when you have the time.”

 

Seung Gil folded yet another piece of black clothing and put it in his small metal drawer. He had left the mess hall as soon as he had been able to, leaving Lt. Babicheva looking slightly disappointed in her seat. There had been too many loudmouthed idiots there, mainly Jumphawk pilots, if he had read the insignia on the uniform right. He could only stand it for however long was necessary. Nothing more.

He sighed wearily, unpacking the rest of his meagre belongings, and placing them in the standard issue furniture his overall spartan room was equipped with. He was glad at least something was up to his expectations.

So far, the Shatterdome had not caused a good impression on Seung Gil. It was not as if he expected something great, of course. Everyone knew that, in times like these, it was not good to waste money on anything other than the absolutely necessary. So, no. Seung Gil had not expected glamour. Of course not.

But perhaps he had been, indeed, waiting for something _different._ Different from the Academy, different from university, and certainly something different from Seoul. After all, the Shatterdome was strategically located so they could stop the kaiju before they crossed the ten mile line. He had expected tension, discipline, not the strange playfulness with which everyone treated each other.

In a way, he had to admit it made him angry. Didn’t they know? Weren’t they aware of the seriousness of their work? Probably, but only intellectually. Seung Gil envied that. He wished he could simply forget. He didn’t. Always present in his mind, there was a need to fight, to show the world what he was made of, and to teach the kaiju that you simply did not mess with Seung Gil’s planet. But he kept his temper cool. He had to, lest he be consumed by his emotions. One couldn’t do that in the Drift, he’d been taught, and one couldn’t do that in the heat of a fight. Distraction equalled death. And Seung Gil refused to be killed in such a manner, simple as that.

 _The time will come,_ he repeated to himself like a mantra. _I just have to wait. I already made it here._

It hadn’t been easy. Seung Gil had needed something to tell himself apart from all the others. A gimmick, if one pleased. Because that was what his Masters in Neuromechanics was, in the end. A pure gimmick to get to the Shatterdome, to prove to everyone who opposed him that he was more than capable of fighting the kaiju.

They would see, sooner or later. Seung Gil had the ability to calculate the pros and cons of every interaction quickly enough to measure damage, broadening his chances of getting where he wanted to be. He trusted in himself.

 _That is the problem,_ a voice seemed to ring in his head. _You can’t just trust in yourself when you drift._

A memory, far away.

It wouldn’t affect him.

It was a simple matter of balancing the situation, after all. They merely needed the same amount of trust as everyone else. The proportion was unimportant.

Miso barked at him and Seung Gil leaned over to pet her, features softening a little.

“We made it here, at last,” he said, fingers running through her soft fur. “And that’s the only thing that matters.”

 

There were few things Phichit loved as much as his phone. His friends were one of them, and thus, he also loved the possibilities of making even more friends. Another thing he loved was telling Chris things his co-worker didn’t know. The arrival of a certain Korean recruit was a mix of those two. Sort of ‘killed two birds with one stone’, except Phichit didn’t like that expression.

“Chris! Guess what?!” he said, rushing to their shared workplace in the K-Science floor.

Chris jumped slightly in startlement, which made him to press his chalk too strongly against the board and it snapped with a dry sound that eerily reminded Phichit of broken bones. The Swiss man looked visibly annoyed for a moment, before he took a deep breath and gave Phichit his classic, flirty smile, adjusting his glasses.

“ _Mon chouchou,_ please do not startle me like that.”

Phichit chuckled softly, but did not apologize.

“I said guess what, Chris, so guess!”

The resident mathematician looked thoroughly unimpressed, which caused Phichit to pout slightly. That expression only intensified when Chris said smugly.

“I’ll take it you have met Seung Gil Lee.” his lips curling a smirk that made Phichit think of the mathematician’s Persian cat.

“Aw, come on!” Phichit complained.

“It’s not that I wanted to disappoint you, _chaton_. It’s just, to put it bluntly, old news. You used to be much quicker when it came to getting those.” he replied in a singsong voice.

Phichit took very few things as an offence, but that was close to crossing the line. He frowned slightly and shook his head.

“When did you find out?” he inquired.

Turning back to his blackboard, Chris shrugged.

“Two days ago.”

“Really?! And you didn’t tell me?” Phichit was completely offended by that. Hurt, even.

“Oh, but I told you, _mon cœur._ ” Chris said, not looking up from the complex string of what Phichit vaguely recognised as probability calculations.

“When?” Phichit demanded.

Chris tutted.

“Proof that you never listen to me, isn’t it? I told you. I was with Masumi-chan in bed, after-”

“That’s not fair!” Phichit complained, deliberately interrupting him. “You know I always tune out your bedroom stories!”

Placing a hand over his own heart, Chris faked a sniffle.

“You truly wound me. My bedroom stories are one of my fortes.”

“If I wanted to feel uncomfortable, I’d look at your side of the room,” Phichit grumbled, gesturing at the posters of scantily clad people on the walls near Chris’ blackboard. They seemed to grow more numerous by the day.

Chris chuckled.

“What’s wrong with my posters?”

Phichit shook his head. There they went again, and the truth was that he didn’t know who was throwing the bait any longer.

“First of all, the angles of the pictures are just wrong! There’s no art to it!”

“There’s the art and beauty of the human body,” Chris announced, with a lilt to his voice.

Phichit sneered. Once upon a time, he had wanted to be a photographer, or a cameraman. Maybe he could still be one, but he had to finish his latest doctorate in Biochemistry first. However he didn’t need a degree in photography to speak his mind.

“Still,” Chris began, “if you’d ever want to show me how it’s done, I’m a very _eager_ model.” his voice was now lower, and he winked at Phichit. “Although maybe _you_ should be my model.”

“You are married, Chris,” Phichit chuckled awkwardly, going to his side of the lab.

“Married, not blind,” Chris commented, but that type of banter also teetered on the edge of unacceptable, and even Chris knew where to stop. Every once in a while. “Talking about eyes, when are you getting rid of the eyesore that is your side?”

Phichit turned to look at the posters pinned on the concrete walls on his side of the laboratory. TYO-13 “Godzilla”, TYO-15 “Mothra”, and other classics.

“What’s wrong with these?” he asked, looking at them affectionately.

“We are here to _fight_ the kaiju, not to worship them.” Chris said with an exaggerated sigh.

“I don’t worship them!” Phichit complained, looking at his kaiju figurines, “I just… collect them.”

Chris scoffed.

“You cannot collect kaiju.”

“There’s people who do!” Phichit protested.

“They collect _parts_ of them. Stop being such a kaiju groupie.”

Phichit shrugged.

“You say potato…”

Chris shook his head. “Phichit, they kill people.”

“Yes! But we don’t know why! If we could understand them-!”

From behind them, an angry voice resounded, skeptical.

“You think you could talk the kaiju out of killing?”

“Oh no,” Chris whispered, feigning concern.

Phichit grimaced at the mirth in his voice as he watched his colleague turning towards his board, humming something. His heart was beating rapidly, and he had not forgotten the imposing figure of Marshall Feltsman who was looming behind him.

“N….no, but….” he stammered, clearing his throat a bit and trying to get a grip of himself “But if we understood them maybe we could stop them!”

The Marshall approached Phichit dangerously, the veins in his temple seeming about to pop.

“And what do you think we are doing here?” he asked, voice too quiet to be good “Petting them?”

He was treading on dangerous ground here, but Phichit could be strong-minded when he wanted to, and though, yes, he was terrified at that point, he also thought he had a pretty solid idea.

“I mean stop them forever.”

“Let me save your pretty derriere here,” Chris interrupted him, tapping his remaining piece of chalk on the board. “Marshall Feltsman, I have some interesting results from my latest calculations.”

The Marshall gave Phichit a glare, grumbling ominously.

“You are spared… for now.”

Phichit, however, only had to pout at that. He knew what Chris was about to say, and though it was an idea, it wasn’t as good as Phichit’s idea. It was a theoretic mathematical idea, so there was no guarantee it would be valid once they tested it empirically. Not to mention that the likeliness of being able to run a test to Chris’ idea was close to null. And to think the Swiss considered Phichit’s ideas crazy.

Chris, despite Phichit’s mental reservations, continued.

“It’s about the Throat of the Breach. The passage between which the kaiju’s travel… it doesn’t open and close automatically. In fact, the bigger the kaiju, the longer it remains open. I call this the Deepthroat Effect.” one of the lab aides who was passing by the open door to their laboratory let out a snicker, at which Chris seemed especially delighted.

“Odd name,” the Marshall said, arms crossed and grinding his teeth. “But continue.”

“So, we know we cannot destroy the Breach itself. But if we catch it open, we might be able to get something in the Throat. Say, a bomb.”

Marshall Feltsman’s features lost their edge for a moment, and turned into an expression of disbelief, but most importantly, one of hope.

“We could destroy the Breach for once and for all.”

“Exactly,” Chris smiled smugly.

“When will it be open next time? We have to make preparations.”

Chris’ face contorted into something similar to a grimace.

“Well, there’s bad news and… better ones.”

The Marshall’s face fell again, turning into a serious frown. “Okay, go ahead.”

“Well, in order to have enough time, the Throat must open enough to let out a very big or strong kaiju, at the very least. But according to the pattern I’ve discovered, that won’t happen.”

The older man massaged his temples.

“So what are the better news?”

¨Phichit fought his best to suppress a chuckle, knowing what came next.

“Those _are_ the better news,” Chris announced.

The Marshall sighed, and grumbled something under his breath, which Phichit could bet his first issue Godzilla poster were Russian swearwords..

“Fine, what are the bad news, then?” the Marshall asked with strained patience.

“Well, what I do predict will happen is this: we won’t get a very big, strong kaiju, but two not so big, not so strong kaiju.”

Feltsman froze for a moment.

“A… double event?”

“And then a triple, and then a quadruple event, and then-”

“I get it.“ the Marshall interjected, then lowering his voice he added a flat “We are doomed.”

“If we don’t get the bomb in, then… _oui,_ ” Chris replied, his trademark playfulness crumbling at the gravity of the situation “Because that double event will be enough to do it.”

The Marshall seemed tired, like he had gone on a rollercoaster. And had a bad time on it.

“Fine, we’ll start preparing for the double event.” he said with a nod.

Phichit pursed his lips, half relieved he was saved, half wanting to say something. The halves quickly fought against each other, the latter part winning.

“What if that doesn’t solve it?”

Feltsman looked at him again, with barely contained rage. He had gone through too much already and Phichit was slightly sorry he had to add more to it. But duties were duties. He wasn’t paid only to take selfies.

“I’ll be succinct. I’ve been investigating the genetic material of kaiju and I realized, they are the same. Let me stop you before you say ‘it’s the same species’. Because, it’s not. It’s exactly. The. Same. Like clones! Every single organ I’ve checked, no matter the kaiju it comes from, they share the exact composition.” he spoke quickly, not wanting to be interrupted. “That’s point number one. Point number two is this: though the kaiju’s DNA does about the same as our DNA does, I’ve discovered a partition of it that has the specific role of storing memory. That means-”

He gestured at the others to complete his thought, but grew too impatient

“-that they have cellular memory! Now, if we join these two facts together, it means all kaiju share the same memory. So if we could just read that, we would know more about them and how to stop them!” he held up his hand in a victory sign.

Marshall Feltsman looked unimpressed.

“And how do you suppose we read that memory?”

“And there he goes.” Chris muttered, shaking his head softly.

“Easy!” Phichit ignored him, and spoke animatedly. “We create a neural bridge with it!”

He had discussed his theory with Yuuri, but telling it to the Marshall meant so much more. It meant it could turn into a reality! The silence didn’t dissuade him from that idea.

Not until the Marshall spoke again.

“You are suggesting we drift with a kaiju,” he said, in disbelief.

The cheerful smile Phichit had on his face lost a little of its radiance.

“Yes.” he stammered.

“Who would be crazy enough to do that?” Feltsman continued.

Phichit didn’t hesitate.

“It’s not crazy. We would learn so much. Of their technology, their habitat, everything!”

“I’m taking that to mean you are volunteering.”

“Yes!” Phichit answered, nodding a little.

Marshall Feltsman took a deep breath and cleared his throat.

“I have one question for you, Dr. Chulanont.” he asked calmly, before his voice became so loud that everyone in the K-Science floor turned to look at the three of them through the large glass panes that divided the lab from the corridor. “Are you an idiot?!”

“I have four doctorates, sir. I’m not an idiot,” Phichit defended himself, calmly, but unable to stop his lips from pursing.

“The neural handshake is enough to drain two pilots drifting together. Drifting with a kaiju is unthinkable!” The Marshall continued, as if he hadn’t heard him.

“But-”

“No!” he repeated, shaking his head and turning to Chris. “You! I expect a report of your findings on my desk today.” Then he turned to Phichit. “You! I expect you to start doing some serious work!” Then he left the room, grumbling: “Drifting with a kaiju. Who has ever considered that? It’s the stupidest…” until it became unintelligible.

Chris turned to Phichit, shaking his head a little.

“I’m sorry, _mon cher_ , but I will have to side with him.”

However, Phichit was not discouraged. Not one bit.

“Oh, I know that sparkle in your eyes.” Chris said with a weary sigh “What are you going to do?” he asked, sounding defeated.

Phichit flashed him a bright grin.

“You’ll have to wait to see it on my Instagram stories like everyone else.”

 

The laboratory was silent. There was only the soft whirring of the ventilation in the empty room. Chris removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, careful not to get any chalk in them. He was bone tired, but the deadline to the next kaiju attack was growing closer and closer, according to his probabilistic model, and Chris wanted to get a more precise result. The span of three days less or three days more was not enough. If he could just refine the patterns, there was a chance to lower the standard deviation and get a result as close to the empiric ones.

When he had started working on his first doctorate Chris had not thought he was in for a stressful career. His lips curled into a weary grin. There had been many things he had not predicted back then, and the irony of it was something even his mathematically challenged husband was able to see. He shook his head putting his glasses back on his nose and walking to his desk to take another sip of the already cold coffee he had asked one of the lab aides to fetch him.

Everyone was back in their quarters now, even the ever hyperactive Thai xeno-zoologist he shared a lab with. And if that was not a testament of the lateness of the hour, Chris didn’t know what could be.

Although Phichit _had_ been acting quite strangely in the past ten days. Ever since the Marshall’s latest visit, the Thai had been conspicuously tight lipped about his work. And while silence was more conductive to complex mathematical calculations, Chris couldn’t help missing the constant chatter. In the past two years he had gotten so used to Phichit’ exuberance it was uncanny to be without it.

Chris feared he was up to something. He had no previous data to corroborate that theory, merely gut feeling. And while it was the most unscientific of claims, Chris had learned a long time ago his gut feeling was seldom wrong. After all, it had landed him a hot husband with a PhD, he thought with a wide grin.

But thinking about how Chris had managed to get Masumi-chan to date him, and later marry him, was not going to help him unravel the Phichit mystery. And the fact there were three full blackboards filled with calculations that led to nowhere helped even less.

He _was_ supposed to work on narrowing the kaiju events, not playing detective.

Unless what Phichit was hiding had something to do with the kaiju. And knowing the Thai was a kaiju stan, it probably _had_ something to do with the interdimensional beast, didn’t it?

Chris leaned against his desk, fingers closing around his mug of coffee, as a faint idea made its way to the forefront of his mind. And his stomach dropped even at the hypothetical possibility that Phichit _was_ trying to do what Chris suspected he was trying to do. He shook his head, staring into nothingness. It was foolish, downright stupid, and while Phichit treaded the line between genius and madness he was not so reckless, was he?

Setting down his mug with too much force he strode through the lab, making for the door. His jacket was still hanging on the coat rack, but Chris didn’t really care if he was striding through the base in just his button down and vest. What he cared even less was the late hour and the certainty that he was going to wake the Thai once he made it to his quarters. Because Chris needed to confront Phichit, and if the xeno-zoologist was _really_ that foolish, he needed to have a serious talk with him.

They might have a policy of not butting in each other’s scientific disciplines, and over the years they may have developed a playfulness that made them seem anything but serious, but Chris cared about him. He was his friend.

He could not let him do something  so stupid and so dangerous.

Chris was halfway through the corridor of Sublevel 13 when the silence of the graveyard shift was pierced by a shrill and horribly familiar sound.

The kaiju alarm.

_Merde._

 

It was two in the morning, and Leo had awoken to the blaring of the alarm. He pulled his clothes on autopilot, eyes barely able to focus in spite of the already familiar adrenaline rush that came with the kaiju alert. He stifled a yawn as he strode out of his quarters and towards the LOCCENT room, which was thankfully just a flight of stairs lower. The elevators were bound to be busy at the moment, and he had to be at the control centre as soon as humanly possible. It was his job to make sure everything ran smoothly, from the pilots to the Jaegers, including overseeing the Drift process and the subsequent neural handshake.

The metal stairs rattled under his booted feet, and he made it to the main level, breezing past groggy technicians and pilots, with the odd exception of those who had been working the graveyard shift and were happy something had broken the monotony of the night. Although, Leo guessed that the fact a kaiju had appeared at the Marianas Trench and was striding towards Japan was not exactly something to be cheerful about. People could be killed if they did not act quickly.

One of the latest recruits was blocking the access to the LOCCENT entrance and Leo tried to stifle his annoyance, muttering a polite:

“Excuse me,” which startled the blond technician who quickly began apologising in a mixture of Japanese and English.

 _“Gomennasai,_ I’m sorry, sir! _Gomennasai.”_ He was bowing deeply in front of Leo, and to his chagrin, still actively preventing him from entering the LOCCENT room.

“It’s alright.” he said with a smile, but feeling a huff of exasperation “Just, let me through?”

 _“Ossu!”_ replied the recruit, straightening his back. His red fringe bobbed in front of his wide eyes, and Leo just shook his head in slight amusement and considerable exasperation, walking past him and finally reaching the glass sliding door of the control room.

The Lieutenant was already there, along with Masumi-san who was sitting in front of the Neural Bridge Console, tapping his fingers in a waltz rhythm while he waited for the pilots to enter their respective Conn-Pods.

“Morning everyone.” he greeted the room, walking to his desk, and pulling his headphones around his neck while he logged in the system.

“It’s a Category III kaiju, codename: Vodyanoy.” Lt. Babicheva informed him.

“Another Russian name?” Leo grinned “Someone at K-Watch is definitely trying to flirt with you, ma’am.”

Lt. Babicheva rolled her eyes, in mock exasperation, before she continued her report.

“We’re dispatching all three Jaegers, with Partizan Hope and Potya on the attack, while Sleeping Prince keeps the Miracle Mile.”

“What about Hasetsu, ma’am?” Leo asked

“Hasetsu is on standby,” came the reply from the back of the room where the Marshall had just walked in “I spoke with Minako and they won’t be sending their tin cans out unless things get ugly.”

Leo nodded, turning towards his screen, where he was able to track the progress. The Crispino twins had just walked into Partizan Hope’s Conn-Pod, while the other four rangers were still getting fitted into their gear. The Jumphawk pilots were all waiting in standby. He watched the two Italian rangers get fitted their helmets on. Leo glanced in the Marshall’s direction and Feltsman nodded.

“Sara, Michele” he spoke into the microphone “How are you this fine morning? Ready to kick some alien ass?”

Both the twins gave him a synchronised thumbs up that was as eerie as ever. Leo wondered how strong the Ghost Drift between those two had to be for them to be so attuned to each other. Masumi-san nodded from his console, and Leo tapped the holoscreen in to his right, finalising the preliminary analysis.

“Engage drop” the Marshall ordered, and Leo inserted the command. “Release for drop”

Simultaneously the twins pressed the buttons on the command console, and Leo watched the giant gantry release the Conn-Pod, the loud metallic sound crackling through the speakers. The rails on the sides of the shaft guided the Conn-Pod to the body of Jaeger, normally separated to avoid the radiation from Partizan Hope’s nuclear core which over time lead to the deterioration of the sophisticated technology the cranial frame held inside.

The head began slowing down, and then it attached itself to the cervical assembly. A quick work of the robotic arms bolted it into place, and then the Jaeger was complete. The nuclear turbines roared to life, and Leo released command-and-control to the twins. Then he tapped the Launch Bay gate controls, and with a booming sound of sliding metal the ink black sky peeked inside the Shatterdome.

“The gates are open, sir.” Leo informed the Marshall “Sliding platform set into place, ready to release Partizan Hope.”

“Release the gantry.” Marshall Feltsman gave the command, and a moment later the oldest Jaeger in their base plopped into the Pacific Ocean, generating a large wave that hit the concrete walls of the Shatterdome.

The Marshall walked to Leo’s right, and spoke into the microphone.

“Rangers, this is Marshall Yakov Feltsman,” he spoke loudly, every now and then the slightest inflection to his English betraying his Russian origin. “Prepare for neural handshake”

A holographic representation of two brains appeared in front of them, and Leo glanced towards Masumi-san, waiting for his nod. The NBO’s head bobbed in a quick assent, and Leo looked back at the hologram which hovered above his console.

“Starting in five, four…” he did the countdown, watching the stats keep within the usual values for the Crispinos. They had always been a tad less steady than other Rangers, but they never failed to complete the neural handshake. “One. Neural handshake successful. Well done guys.”

“Neural handshake strong and holding.” Masumi-san reported curtly, as the two brain graphics overlaid.

 _“Right hemisphere ready.”_ Sara’s voice came through the speakers.

 _“Left hemisphere linked and ready.”_ Michele spoke a moment later. _“Partizan Hope ready to deploy, sir.”_

The twins lifted their hands in salute, and the Jaeger followed suit, the gigantic metal hand touching the cranial frame just above the Conn-Pod.

“Rangers, you and Potya will attack Vodyanoy with standard formation,” the Marshall voiced his orders. “Sleeping Prince will hold the Miracle Mile. Copy?”

 _“Copy that,”_ both twins replied with a sharp nod that translated onto the Jaeger.

One done, two more to go.

Leo checked how the other four pilots were doing, but all four of them were being fitted in their respective Conn-Pods, and it would be a couple of minutes before they would be able to initiate the Drift procedure. On the upside, the Mark IV and Mark V Jaegers did not necessitate the drop procedure since their Conn-Pods were integrated into the robot’s bodies.

“How much time do we have?” the Lieutenant asked, and Leo checked the holoscreen on his left where the kaiju movements were being tracked. It was not an easy task, to track them once they climbed out of the Marianas Trench, but sonar technology had made possible to follow the kaiju to an extent.

“He’s moving fast, ma’am,” he told Lt. Babicheva, feeling a coil of worry in his stomach. “We might not have the time to wait for Potya,” he told the Marshall who was glaring at the screen, watching Plisetsky’s face disappear inside the helmet.

His wrinkled face contorted into a grimace and then he bellowed

“Deploy Partizan Hope,“

“Partizan Hope, you’re gonna have to hold your ground until the cavalry arrives.” Leo spoke into his microphone.

“ _Copy that._ ” Michele answered and then the squadron of Jumphawks began their ascent,  lifting Partizan Hope above the Ocean and carrying her over the ten mile line.

Leo bit the inside of his lip. He knew it was the smart thing to do, but of the three jaegers they had, the Crispinos were piloting the oldest, and this was a class three kaiju. But if the beast made it past the ten mile line they would be risking the lives of millions of people.

Sighing, he silently prayed for the twins’ safety. It was all he could do, after all.

He had two more Drifts to accompany.

The Potya pilots were finally ready and Leo grinned.

“Yuri, Otabek, took your merry time, did you?” he joked as the two youngest pilots scowled at him, but it was not a surprise, with Yuri’s aggressive veneer and Otabek’s stoicism they were not the most friendly guys in the Ranger squad. Plus, neither of them liked their beauty sleep interrupted, Leo recalled with an amused grin “I’ll skip the pleasantries guys, since our old lady is out there alone.”

Leo opened the gates of Landing Bay 3, and then they were going through the same routine. Neural handshake, yelled orders, and another squadron of Jumphawk lifting their Mark V Jaeger and disappearing into the darkness.

One more Jaeger to go.


	2. An Anomaly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We apologise for the long wait!

 

The sea merged into the sky, an endless expanse of black that moved in shuddering waves, glistening under the faint lights of the Jumphawks, only to plunge into pitch darkness soon after. The image played on Otabek’s HUD. Yet another sensory illusion of being something larger than himself; something more than sinews and bone, skin covering in sweat. Like when he practiced in the Kwoon. 

He had done that more than any other cadet, pushing himself harder and harder, until he had become good enough. He had struggled to find his own way to fight, honing his strengths, and succeeding at last. Finding Yuri. Getting a Jaeger. And plunging deep into the drift, so fully he could imagine he was truly made of metal and fine circuitry, tall as a thirty story building, and the closest thing to unbreakable on the planet.

It was a heady feeling, this vicarious strength in his limbs, in  _ their  _ limbs. Because being one with Potya was illusion and reality at the same time, but his mind slotting perfectly against Yuri’s and aligning in perfect synchronicity was tangible. The truly were one in the drift, and it was a feeling of completion he had never been able to experience anywhere else. With anyone else.

His upper lips curled in a grimace at his sappiness, and he suspected it was Yuri. Had Otabek spoken it out loud, he would have gotten a loud snarl at his quote unquote fucking sappiness, but in the safety of their shared consciousness the sneer was not trying to mask the peace Yuri felt when they drifted together, and the way all the things which were normally out of joint would slide in their rightful place. It was more than killing the kaiju for Yuri. Piloting a jaeger was plunging into silence. 

Only in the drift he was truly free, and Otabek lent him his wings freely. They soared together, lighter in the synergy of their combined mind. Complementary. 

It was harder and easier at the same time to stop a train of consciousness in the mind meld, and Otabek found himself shifting his focus back on the ocean beneath them. They had passed the ten mile line, but Partizan Hope and the kaiju were nowhere in sight yet, and he scanned the view on his HUD, looking for the tiniest flicker of movement. But both the infrared and the sonar showed nothing but the squadron on Jumphawks which carried them toward their target. 

Otabek was always calm before a mission, but at the same time he could feel adrenaline sing inside his body. He couldn’t wait to get there and kick some kaiju ass.

“That was one of yours, Yura.” Otabek observed wryly at the curse, eliciting a chuckle from his co-pilot.

“We should be nearly there.” Yuri said, more out of habit than necessity. The thought had already been in Otabek’s mind when the blond had opened his mouth to speak. But it was good to hear each other’s voice. In spite of their minds being connected in the drift, it felt lonely when the only sound he could hear were the beeps of the console, and the roar of the helicopter blades outside.

His eyes rolled at his thought, and it was all Yuri’s doing. His lips curled in a smile. 

And just then a small flicker of movement appeared on the infrared, getting larger and larger and they neared it. Partizan Hope and Vodyanoy, circling each other, only to clash one into the other a moment later. Otabek watched the Jaeger dodge the kaiju tail, leaving herself open for a hit on her flanks. The jaeger staggered, her balance wobbly for a second, but even as she stabilised herself, Partizan Hope was already lunging towards the beast, firing from her plasma cannon.

“Potya, ready for deploy?” Leo’s voice suddenly filtered through the helmet, and Otabek lifted his hands in a thumbs-up which was mirrored by Yuri, and Potya's gigantic metal hands.

“Ready!” Yuri replied, and a moment later the magnetic harnesses were unhooked, and they were falling into the Ocean, legs crouching instinctively to soften the landing. 

Once they straightened to full height the water reached Potya’s upper chest, but they hardly had time to contemplate it, because a moment later they were running towards the flashing lights that could be nothing but Partizan Hope’s plasma cannon. The infrared and sonar mapping on their HUDs confirmed it. The Jaeger was holding the kaiju in a chokehold, trying to hit it with plasma beams, but the beast - huge, it was fucking huge - used it to get leverage, flipping Partizan Hope and throwing her into the ocean. 

Vodyanoy was about to pounce on the older Jaeger when Potya threw herself at him at full speed, tackling the kaiju, while the other Jaeger got back to her feet. Even with the added height of a Mark V, Vodyanoy was still taller, and instead of falling to its back, it managed to roll back to its feet, and pushed into Potya’s midsection with its spiked spine. Otabek felt the hit in his stomach, and they recoiled, lowering an arm to the ocean floor to push themselves back to their feet.

“I think it’s time to cut this bitch up.” Yura snarled, as they activated the Sting Blade. 

The retractable carbon-nanotube-edged weapon was a badass sword as Yuri put it. It was superheated and would slice through kaiju flesh like butter. They lowered Potya in a half crouch, getting into battle stance, just as Partizan Hope’s plasma cannon hit Vodyanoy in its hind leg. They had it surrounded, and for a brief moment they all stood in this impasse, waiting for the kaiju’s move. 

But the motherfucker was as smart as they all were, and it swung its tail, hitting Partizan Hope’s leg. Not strongly enough to make her lose balance, but enough to buy itself time to lunge at Potya. The kaiju evaded the blade as it swung towards its stomach, and in the same move it hit Potya’s shoulder, hard. 

“Fuck.” Yuri exclaimed, and it was on the tip of Otabek’s tongue. That one had really hurt. 

He stifled the urge to rub his shoulder. The pain was not really there, it was the synaptic processor array which projected it, in order to use reflexive responses rather than rational ones. A logical choice, maybe, but it still stung like a bitch.

The kaiju was moving, pouncing forwards to attack Partizan Hope who was running towards them, swinging her arm into a neat uppercut that caught Vodyanoy right on the chin, or whatever the frog-faced alien’s equivalent of a chin was. The beast staggered, but held its ground, countering with a strong hit to Partizan Hope’s left side, while at the same time its tail coiled around Potya’s ankle and tried to unbalance them.

That bitch. It knew it was outnumbered, and it made sure the two Jaegers could not coordinate an attack. But if it thought it was going to work it had a surprise coming. 

“Partizan Hope, let’s make this bitch dizzy.” Yuri snarled into the comm.

“Copy, Potya.” Sara replied “Tarantella time it is,  _ piezz e mmerda! _ ”

And then Partizan Hope was attacking with all they had, keeping the kaiju engaged, and unable to do much more than swing its tail at Potya. Otabek and Yuri played along, bidding their time, slashing and parrying with their blade, but not actively looking for weak spots. 

Then Partizan Hope hit the kaiju with a left cross, at the same time firing with the plasma cannon, and it was Potya’s cue to swivel around the kaiju and jump towards it, blade piercing its shoulder, and burying deep into the alien flesh. Bright blue blood seeped out of the wound as they pulled the blade out, hitting its stomach with their Pulse Gauntlet. Before the kaiju had time to properly react their blade was swinging again, slashing into the neck. 

Vodyanoy staggered, and Partizan Hope was supposed to give the killing blow, but when no attack came from their right, they hit the kaiju’s face with the Pulse Gauntlet just as it swung its tail in a last effort to attack. But Potya was faster, and the blade cut cleanly through the sinews and bone of the tail severing it. A horrible wail escaped the kaiju’s mouth, and in spite of the large wounds littering its body, Vodyanoy went berserk, throwing itself on Potya, and making them stagger to keep balance.

“Partizan Hope, we could use some help,” Otabek spoke into the comm, but the twins were silent, and he looked into the HUD but the other Jaeger was standing motionless behind them, every now and then its limbs twitching in what could  _ not  _ be normal.

“LOCCENT, Partizan Hope is experiencing some malfunction, do you copy?” he spoke, distress making its way into his voice. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Yuri asked more or less at the same time, all the while trying to get the kaiju off them. It was hitting, clawing at the Conn-Pod, trying to do the most damage in a kamikaze effort. 

“Potya, we’re trying to reach Partizan Hope, but it’s still radio silence,” Leo’s voice filtered through, and there was worry in it. “Their neural handshake is a mess. We don’t know what is happening.”

“Fuck.” Yuri muttered, but they had more imminent problems than their fellow Jaeger’s malfunction. They were in a dire situation, and it was looking very much like their latest mission, when Georgi and Anya had needed to jump in and save their skin because their Jaeger had stopped working in the middle of it. 

“Beka.” Yuri said, and Otabek just nodded.

“We’re finishing this  _ now, _ ” he snarled, and then activated the burst propulsors, which made them leap out of the ocean, shaking the kaiju off them in the process. Still airborne, they thrust the blade forwards, and they used the moment to slash into the kaiju’s hard-plated back. Gravity combined with their considerable weight made the blade slice cleanly through the kaiju, effectively cutting him in half.

 

The moment the kaiju fell down, the control room exploded in a flurry of activity. 

“Leo, dispatch the Med Team,” Mila all but yelled, feeling her heart in her throat, but she ignored it. She needed to keep her wits about. “Masumi-san, what is going on with the twins?”

“I… This is not normal,” the Neural Bridge Operator told her with a shake of his head, as he reviewed the data. “It looks almost… no, but it cannot be.”

“Almost like what?” Yakov bellowed, and Masumi-san grimaced, knitting his eyebrows as he looked at the neural scans.

“Almost as if only one of the pilots was connected to the Jaeger.” he said “But at the same time Sara’s vitals are unchanged, and she  _ is  _ conscious.”

“What are you saying? That Michele pushed his sister out of the Drift?” Mila asked, frowning in curiosity, but also terribly worried, “Is that even possible?”

“No, it isn’t,” Masumi-san shook his head with conviction, “If one of the pilots falls out of the Drift, the other one does too.”

“Is there any other explanation?” Yakov asked harshly, looming above the scientist with all his height and girth.

“No, sir,” Masumi replied, letting his head fall a notch as he sighed “Besides, I don’t think that’s all.” He lifted his hand to point at something on screen “You see this? These are Michele’s brain waves, and they’ve been off the chart for a while now.”

“Another thing you can’t explain, Giacometti?” the Marshall inquired with that unhappy expression which usually made people squirm. 

But Masumi-san looked him square in the eye.

“No,” he bit back. “This is something I could have recognised in college. Sir,” he explained with an edge of defiance. “It’s a seizure, or in fact a set of several seizures that hit the pilot in the interval of five minutes.” There was a flush on the scientist’s cheeks and Mila knew it was anger, pulsing under his skin, ready to burst. It was a common sight on Yuri’s face, but not on Masumi-san. And she held her breath.

“And before you ask,” he continued, “yes, the seizures probably  _ are  _ the reason why Sara got kicked out of the Drift, but Michele should not be still connected to the Jaeger. The neural handshake  _ should not  _ be stable.”

Yakov did not confront the scientist further, and Mila sighed in relief. With a last glance at the furious neuroscientist, she turned back to Leo.

“The Med Team?” she inquired.

“On their way, ma’am” Leo replied “And I took the liberty of sharing the Marshall and Masumi-san’s convo.”

“Good! I knew there was a reason I liked you,” Mila said with a grin, the first one she had been able to pull since this clusterfuck of a mission had begun.

 

Emil didn’t often frown, but now he couldn’t stop doing it. He had heard the conversation, and it didn’t stop ringing in his head as they made their way to the Jaegers. A seizure? Mickey had never had seizures. Sure, he’d been looking tired lately, but if something was off, the twins would have told him, right?

Not quite, but he liked to think they would have. Even if it was deceiving himself.

After all, he had chosen his path along with them, after tragedy had stricken for the first time. He had chosen to become a nurse when the two of them had decided to become Jaeger pilots. That way they’d be together, he had said. It was nice, comforting… it made him happy to know he could help. But-

“Are you worried?” he heard a voice say. It was Doctor Bin, looking at him with a concerned expression.

“N-no?” He managed, unconvincingly. But he was twirling his hair around his finger, which he always did when he was stressed. Anyone who knew Emil even a bit could tell you that, even when he smiled, if he did that it meant there was something bothering him.

“They are your friends. It’s natural you are concerned,” Doctor Bin continued, patting his shoulder lightly. “I just think maybe you shouldn’t…” He drifted off, but Emil knew what it meant. Whenever the Crispinos were out on a mission, he insisted on being there as soon as he could. Sometimes even before the battle ended, actually. And one thing was being an adrenaline junkie. Another, very different one, was being a complete idiot, he’d been told.

“I’m fine, sir,” he said, as he put on the HAZMAT suit they were required to wear to avoid getting infected with Kaiju Blue. 

The chopper reached Partizan Hope and Potya. Emil was the first to descend towards the former. 

It was not a pretty sight. Sara laid on the ground, cradling his brother’s head and insistently calling his name, with tears in her eyes and a fragile desperation to her voice. And Mickey…

Well, Mickey looked as if he was sleeping. Eyes closed, mouth a little open, ever-present frown gone from his face. It would have been a nice sight, really, if it hadn’t been for the blood dripping down his face from his nose. There was also the way he was foaming at the mouth, but with Mickey’s usual anger, that was almost normal. Almost. 

“Did he hit his head?” he asked, concern clear in his voice. But Sara did not answer. She just kept calling her brother’s name uselessly. At least Mickey didn’t seem to have bitten his tongue. Meanwhile, he knelt by the pair. Gently, he pried Mickey away from Sara, who for a moment seemed ready to attack him for daring do so. But then she saw his face, and seemed to slowly recognize him.

“Emil, he-” she closed her mouth, apparently unsure of what to say. “He had a seizure.”

“I know,” he said, as the rest of the team descended upon the Jaeger, moving Mickey carefully to a stretcher. Sara didn’t seem surprised, she now didn’t even seem sad. She seemed angry. Emil couldn’t understand the reason behind that, but he decided not to ask. Not with the rest of the Med Team with them.

Emil wondered if he was even going to be told what had happened. Did the Crispinos trust in him as naturally and wholly as Emil trusted in them?

And what if they did and it was misplaced trust? What if Emil couldn’t help them?

He guided Sara into the chopper and then stood by her, both of them glancing at Mickey in silence. Sometimes, the doctor asked Emil for assistance, but even as he helped, his mind was on Sara, looking helpless and frustrated

He offered her a smile. It was the only thing he could offer. 

 

The room was silent, except for a faint beeping noise, blissfully steady in its rhythm. There was a strong smell of antiseptic, which tangled with one Sara was very familiar with. She didn’t know if it was her hair which fell in a clumsily braid over her shoulder, or if it was her brother’s unconscious form that still smelled like relay gel. She had not gotten to her quarters yet, and her skin felt coated in grime under the tight confines of her drivesuit. She was aware she should take her suit off, take a shower, eat, and above it all sleep. But there was no way in hell she was going to leave her brother’s side. Not while he was still unconscious. 

Not until his brain waves returned to a normal pattern. 

She exhaled a shaky breath, digging her nails on the plastic of her kneepads. Michele was such an  _ idiot. _ A stupid, foolish, reckless idiot. Sara shook her head. This was her fault too. She had allowed him to go through with it, and now he was paying the consequences of their shared stupidity.

Twins were naturally drift compatible. It was a universally acknowledged fact, and since the very start of the Jaeger program a case of incompatibility had never been documented. Combat in the Kwoon, drift trials, every single test kept confirming what even the common people knew, twins made the best rangers. 

Sara and Michele were not drift compatible. Not fully. But no one had ever realised there was something anomalous in their drift, no one saw the way Michele seemed to shoulder the brunt of it while Sara remained a small, barely active counterpart somewhere on the edge of it. How it was her that attuned to her brother rather than the two of them melding into one. And when it came to the neural handshake, it was Michele’s consciousness that controlled both hemispheres  _ and  _ her. He led, she followed.

After the third mission with their Mark III jaeger her brother had started getting headaches, blinding pain searing through his head for hours to no end. And Sara had begun to wonder if there was something wrong with them. With the way they melded. Because other rangers’ accounts were different from their experience, so vastly that Sara had always felt self conscious about sharing her own. 

After the sixth mission the nosebleeds had started. And by then even Michele had been forced to begrudgingly agree that something was not quite right. But he had refused to report it. He wanted to pilot, he wanted to keep fighting. They had lost too much to the kaiju. What else could they do? 

Sara should have never agreed to it. She should have known Michele would be too stubborn to stop when things became too dire. That it had always been foreordained to end like this, with her brother attached to a machine after a seizure had nearly gotten them killed during a deploy. 

He was unconscious still, and the medical staff had not been optimistic. Even Emil had been glum when he had paid them both a visit earlier, gently trying to convince Sara to go and rest. He was off shift, he had said, but he would stay there. She needed to rest, he had reminded her. But Sara was made of the same stubborn matter her brother was, and unless the Marshall himself ordered to her quarters she was  _ not _ going to leave her brother’s bedside

 

The metal staircase rattled lightly under his feet, as he strode towards the gangway which led to Partizan Hope’s Conn-Pod. The hull of the Jaeger head was still glistening with moisture, swaying lightly on the harnesses which kept connected it to the giant gantry. Only minutes had passed since the older Jaeger had returned to the base, but Seung-gil was already there. He had left his station the moment Masumi-san called him, telling him about the incident, and asking him to look at the Conn-Pod before the maintenance technicians put their paws on it. Well, his superior might not have used  _ those  _ exact words, but after nearly a fortnight of working at the Oshima Shatterdome he had no illusion on the competence of the maintenance staff. They were idiots.

He wouldn’t trust them with feeding Miso, let alone with the fine neural technology of the Conn-Pod. And it was a wonder those were the most competent people the Pan Pacific Defense Corps could find. Though maybe it was the light atmosphere in the Oshima Shatterdome that had made them lose their concern for perfection. Seung Gil could understand, sometimes, forgetting that there were lives at stake. The pressure became too much if you were constantly on the edge and you failed just as much. But when discipline was lax, when they could talk around and joke  _ during  _ maintenance work, people became distracted. He would file a complaint about that when he finished his work in the Conn-Pod. 

There was a light burn in his calves by the time he reached the gangway, and Seung Gil made a mental note to start running again in the morning. He could not lose his hard earned stamina. It was unacceptable.

The Conn-Pod was still sealed, and Seung Gil pushed his fingers inside a small fissure in the hull, pulling on a latch which unlocked a portion of it with a quiet hiss, revealing the manual control panel. He inserted the bypass code and several commands later the Conn-Pod entrance was sliding open. The numerous lights were coming to life slowly as the system booted. The newer marks of Jaeger were faster in that regard, but Seung Gil did not mind the wait. It allowed him to take in the configuration of Partizan Hope’s system. 

She had been customised after VAN-16 “Reaper” had torn through the cranial frame, destroying a good portion of the circuitry and killing one of the pilots in the process. Mark IV jaegers were being developed at the time, so part of the new integrated Pons technology had been added to the existing one on the older Jaeger during the lengthy repairs she had undergone. It made her a hybrid in that regard, unique, and Seung Gil was eager to see first hand how the two generations of neural technology interacted.

As the auxiliary screens flickered to life, Seung Gil shook himself out of his reverie. He was here to do a job first. 

He tapped on the holoscreen, reverting it to direct access mode, and the colourful interface disappeared, leaving a blank expanse with only a small command line blinking on top of it. Seung Gil started tapping on the keyboard, inserting the command strings that would allow him to access the LOOP logs which were commonly referred to as the Virtual Black Box. It was an over-simplification of the Local Operation Overseeing Protocol which not only memorised all activity in the Conn-Pod, including sensory data, and Drift scans, but it also analysed the interconnections between the countless inputs. The sheer amount of data would have made it impossible to make any sense from the logs otherwise.

The LOOP technology had been the first step towards the development of artificial intelligence, and when the kaiju attacks began, the Pan Pacific Defense Corps used the still beta technology in the development of the Jaeger operational systems. If the Breach had not appeared Seung Gil had no doubt AI would have been already developed and functional, but instead of thinking robots they had developed mechanical giants who used human minds.

The logs filled the holoscreens around him, and he began scrolling through them, looking for something out of place. He knew the exact moment when Partizan Hope began malfunctioning, but he was certain there had been harbingers of it. There had to be small changes or discrepancies in the earlier logs. Jaeger technology was too complex to just suddenly stop working. If something was amiss it would trail back to at least several processes before. 

But no matter how many times he looked through the LOOP outputs, he could not see anything even slightly out of place until the moment the Drift had gone haywire. It made absolutely no sense. Something had to have gone amiss, but every result was correct. 

Seung Gil thought back on the idiocy of the maintenance staff. Yes, that made sense. There was no error in the system itself, but if a connection was physically malfunctioning, if anything did not quite make contact the way it should have, some error was to be expected. So he checked the cables, seeing that there were nothing bare, nothing pulled. He tried disconnecting and connecting the thinking pads, which were more likely to have caused the error, but as he checked back on the logs, nothing seemed to give any indication of an error. 

Seung Gil was scrolling through those logs when the sound of footsteps startled him. He went back to normal soon enough, however. Probably someone who was also sent to do his job, or to check on him. He continued working, up until the moment he heard the footsteps stop and a confused man speaking: “Sorry, I didn’t know there was anybody here!”

Seung Gil turned around a bit, only to spot a Jumphawk pilot jacket. Great. Probably some moron taking a chance to glimpse at that which he’d never touch. Yet another proof that people in that base did not know their place. 

Assuming the man would leave, Seung Gil went back to check the connections, removing a panel by the floor and exposing a dozen tangled cables. Seung Gil would have sighed, because now he needed to untangle them. Instead, he sighed because he heard the sound of feet approaching.

“You are still here,” he commented, annoyance clear in his voice as he turned to see a man leaning by his side, glancing at the cabling with utmost curiosity. Something in him seemed familiar. The man looked at him and smiled widely, before speaking:

“You know, you never think of how many cables a jaeger has!” he commented, unnecessarily loudly, and oh, of course Seung Gil had heard his voice. It was  _ the  _ Jumphawk pilot who would not stop yelling at the mess hall. Every single day. He was the main cause for Seung Gil hating lunch time, only second to the amount of canned vegetables in the food. 

Seung Gil closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and went back to working on untangling the cables. But the man seemed keen on talking. Of course he did. Jumphawk pilots, as a rule, thought everything they did or thought was exciting. As if flying into a Kaiju and then retreating was that important.

“I saw it when you got here, you know?” he continued, in that strangely loud volume that seemed to be natural for him. “You have a dog.”

“Mhm,” he replied, irritated that a man like that knew about Miso.

“You are from J-tech, right? New?”

Seung Gil nodded his head a little and continued trying to work.

“I heard something went wrong with the Crispinos last deploy. Are you working on that?”

“Trying to,” he replied, hoping that the other man would get a clue. He didn’t.

“It was something wrong with their Drift, right? That’s what the people from the Med Team were saying.”

Seung Gil wondered if he even had to reply. Or listen. The man seemed to just want to hear his own voice. So Seung Gil attempted to ignore him. But the annoying stranger just couldn’t be tuned out. He spoke too strongly for that. Seung Gil almost felt pity for his fellow pilots who had to hear him yell through the comm.

“Also heard Mickey had a seizure,” he kept on, as Seung Gil tried to untie a weird and complicated knot. “You think he will be alright?”

Seung Gil didn’t answer.

“You don’t talk a lot,” the man continued.

“I’m concentrating on something else,” Seung Gil answered, frowning a little more.

The man nodded, and Seung Gil felt, for a second, a little bit of hope. It didn’t last long. “Do you need help?”

Seung Gil dropped the knot for a moment, and groaned. 

“This requires expertise,” he lied.

“Looks to me like it just needs patience.”

_ And you certainly don’t have that,  _ Seung Gil thought. Then again, neither did he. 

“Don’t you have something else to do?”

“Just waiting for the next deploy. I’m fine.” 

Great. So not only was the other annoyed, he was bored. 

“I wouldn’t leave this in the hands of a stranger,”  _ especially not a moronic brute like you _ .

“Well, I’m JJ. Jean-Jacques Leroy. I’m not a stranger,” and Seung Gil did not get how merely knowing someone’s name, even if they weren’t lying, meant they were trustworthy.

Finally, he had to be completely direct: “Go away. I’m busy.”

This ‘JJ’ (what a stupid name), seemed surprised for a moment. He walked back a few steps. Then he began pacing around the Conn-Pod. 

“You know. I’ve never been so sure the Crispinos should have piloted this.”

Seung Gil rolled his eyes. Envy, was it? Of course. 

“They are twins. They passed their tests. They are ideal candidates.”

“I know! I know! But I mean Partizan Hope. With her story…” he drifted off, and Seung Gil went back to the cables. “Of course, J-tech has done their best, but… Anyway! It’s just that Mickey seems too worried for his sister, all the time. You know he won’t let most guys talk to her?”

“Now I do,” Seung Gil answered. But he didn’t  _ care.  _

“He keeps thinking he has to protect her!” Seung Gil groaned, resting his forehead on the wall of the Conn-Pod. 

“She’s his sister,” he stated the obvious.

“But Sara is always annoyed by that.”

Seung Gil closed his eyes and exhaled. What even was his  _ point _ ?

“It’s like they don’t communicate. Weird, isn’t it?”

Seung Gil opened his eyes.  _ Like they don’t communicate.  _ He  _ protected her _ . Their Drift was strange. Their Drift was-

What if  _ that  _ was connected to the incident?

He suddenly jumped to his feet. Ignoring how he had startled the other man, he rushed back to the holoscreens, scrolling back to the older logs and focusing on the Drift stats. Rows upon rows of numbers, and everything was perfectly in order, but at the same time he couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something. Neural amplification - perfect. Neural handshakes - stable. Left-to-right balance - 

Seung Gil blinked. 

That could not be right. Unless-

Seung Gil hated to admit it, but the boisterous idiot of a pilot  _ might  _ be right, as irritating as that was. And the more he looked at the numbers the more certain he got. He had been looking for an inconsistency in the LOOP logs prior to the incident, but he had not considered that the  _ whole  _ process had in itself an aberration. He’d been looking for a human error, but from the maintenance team. 

How had he not noticed the skewered values of the Drift data? It was not a large difference, but he should have noticed the left-to-right balance was anything but. The product of the values was the same, but the factors were not. 

Roughly speaking it meant Leroy had a point. It  _ was  _ weird. One of the two pilots had been shouldering the brunt of the Drift, while the other one was auxiliary. Michele Crispino had been basically piloting solo, his sister no more than an aide which had served as a stabiliser.

Seung Gil rushed out of the Conn-Pod, not even caring how surprised Leroy looked. He needed to check something.

 

His husband’s office was too small for Chris’ tastes, and not tidy enough, in spite of Masumi-chan’s normally fastidious nature. There were cables running down the floor, and the static electricity attracted more dust than the janitorial staff was able to efficiently clean. A couple of scorch marks marred the table, no doubt from the micro-soldering gun which was currently neatly tucked into one of the plexiglass tool drawers which lined the floor to his left. 

Now  _ those _ embodied his husband to perfection. Squeaky clean, see through plastic drawers filled with various tools set in surgical neatness, with printed labels declaring the exact content. And a code lock on it, which had been added after the pair of welding goggles had been “borrowed” by unknown technicians. 

The J-tech boys were a mismatched bunch that could have used some order. Ever since the Chief Engineer took a sabbatical to help in the development of Mark VI Jaegers the division had been been slowly falling apart. The Marshall had refused to hire a new Chief because he wanted to keep Cialdini on his team. It was one thing for the R&D department of the pan Pacific Defense Corps to borrow their best engineer, and quite another to hire someone new who would take his place, and perhaps encourage the Italian to take the job in development, rather than overseeing the work of routine maintenance at the Oshima Shatterdome. 

Cialdini had been there from the very first day, and he had been one of the pillars of their base. They could not afford losing him. But after the last two incidents with the Jaegers, Chris was starting to wonder if they were not paying too high a price to keep a man’s job. Potya’s malfunction had been caused by negligence, and he was wondering if Michele’s accident might be also connected to the creeping chaos in the J-tech division.

He sighed, slumping deeper in his seat. Yakov had urgently summoned his husband, and Chris was on tenterhooks. He knew what had happened just hours earlier in LOCCENT room, how the Marshall had practically accused Masumi-chan of not doing his job well enough, and it had pissed Chris off incredibly. There was hardly a more hard working person in the whole Shatterdome than his husband. His job was that of the Neural Bridge Operator, but more often than not he did chores that were  _ not  _ his to take care of. He fixed broken neurotech, oversaw Conn-Pod maintenance, and sometimes even patched the operational systems of the Jaeger. Although the latter was mostly under Chris’ supervision. His husband may be fantastic with neurotechnology, but algorithms were not his forte.

The point was, Masumi-chan worked so hard, giving his all to his job, and to see his husband accused of negligence was beyond infuriating. It was outright offensive.

Chris shook his head, trying to calm down his temper. And the gnawing of worry which rippled underneath it. What would he do if Masumi lost his job? Or worse, if he got court-martialed? Chris could not imagine living in the Shatterdome without his husband, but on the other hand he was needed here, he could not just quit his job to follow Masumi-chan. It was more than just their lives at stake.

He was getting ahead of himself. There was no point in fretting in advance. But after a whole sleepless night, stressing after Phichit, and then kaiju attack, this situation was just on the other side of too much for Chris’ nerves.

He didn’t know which he was more desperate for: a coffee or a drink. None of which were an option in Masumi’s office. And he wanted to wait for his husband to come back. 

Chris rubbed his fingers on his temples to try and relieve some of the tension, and his eyes closed on instinct. Only to fly open a second later, as a distinct knock on glass startled him.

He turned on the revolving chair, looking at an unfamiliar face.

“I thought Dr. Giacometti was here.” the Korean man said curtly, furrowing his thick eyebrows.

“I’m Dr. Giacometti.” Chris replied without missing a beat.

“Oh. I… the  _ other  _ Dr. Giacometti. Masumi-san” the unknown man clarified, and Chris wondered if that was the new guy, Seung Gil Lee. “I need to see him.”

“My husband is in the Marshal’s office at the moment.” he told him “I don’t know when he will be back.”

“It’s important.” Lee said bluntly, and Chris sighed, but the Korean added “It’s about Michele Crispino’s accident. I found out what happened.”

 

Yakov was getting a headache. He could feel it coming, radiating from his temples and slowly spreading as the night began to give way to a very pale morning. The meagre three hours of sleep he had managed to catch surely did nothing to help, but the main reason was the absolute  _ clusterfuck  _ of a situation his base was facing. Now, Yakov knew he had always been a tad too prone to anger. His cardiologist reminded him of that often enough. But he was quite certain the amount of shit hitting the fan tonight warranted some anger. Or in the current case, the visceral urge to strangle someone. A series of people if he could have his way. 

And the first one on the list was doctor Masumi Giacometti, who was currently walking into his office without knocking, and with his jaw set in a way that promised an argument. 

_ Good, _ Yakov thought. Only that disposition could ever result in the Neural Bridge Operator not being fired. He’d rather not have to look for new personnel, at the moment. Things sucked hard enough as they were, and with the approaching double event, they needed to be at full speed. They needed to be ready to put an end to the Kaiju attacks for once and for all, or defend the Earth until there was nothing left for them to do. 

“You wanted to talk to me?” Masumi said.

“Yes,” Yakov confirmed, and his temper was cold. Masumi seemed to register that, and grow slightly more concerned. Yakov knew of his reputation as a man with a temper. But right then things had to be taken rationally. “Take a seat.”

He waited until Masumi did as told, only the tapping of his fingers against the desk betraying his impatience. 

Masumi began speaking. “Sir, before you say anything, I would like to inform you that I have people working on finding out what happened.”

Yakov pursed his lips. “I know what happened. That’s why I called you here.”

“You do?” Masumi asked, shocked. 

“I went to see the Crispinos at the medical wing. Sara Crispino confessed to being aware of an anomaly to her drift for a long time.” Yakov remained quiet for a moment, and was somewhat pleased to see Masumi did not ask anything, probably trusting that the Marshall would tell him. “So, Giacometti. Were you aware that Michele Crispino was doing most of the work when piloting Partizan Hope?”

The shock in Masumi’s face was as clear a reply as any.

“Because that is the case. Michele Crispino has basically been borrowing her sister’s brain power and letting her do none of the work. That has to have showed!” His voice rose, anger taking over him. “In the records, in the diagrams! Somewhere!” He hit the table, took a deep breath and then glared at the other man. “So, explain how you missed it.”

Masumi took a moment. “With all due respect, sir,” he began, “ever since Cialdini left, we’ve been lacking personnel and our success rates have steadily diminished. For example-”

“-Potya and Rusalka,” he finished his thought. “Another shameful moment for your team.”

“Not my team, sir. I’m not in charge of-” he continued, sounding more defensive.

“I don’t want to hear it!” Yakov yelled, hitting his table again. At this pace, it was going to have to be replaced again. “I can’t belie-”

Someone knocked on his door. Yakov chose to ignore it.

“I can’t believe that you would resort to that to excuse your incompetence! It’s intolerable and-”

Another knock. 

“We are busy!” he yelled at the door, before turning to Masumi. “- I think if you cannot do the job properly, you might as well-”

The door opened, and Yakov glanced with fury at it, as the figures of Christophe Giacometti and Seung Gil Lee irrupted into his office. 

“Sir,” Chris said, in an uncharacteristically soft tone, “I’m sorry, but before you say anything, you need to hear this. Permission to-?” he was asking, when Lee interrupted:

“I figured what happened with the Crispino twins.”

Yakov glared at the newcomer even more. “I would have liked to hear that in the LOCCENT room, or before we almost got our rangers killed! It’s too late now! Sara Crispino has come forward!”

Lee’s face changed to something similar to disappointment. 

“Then you know it’s not Masumi’s fault!” Chris started, seemingly having gained some determination to speak.

Yakov turned to scowl at him. “He should have realized earlier,” he stated, with full confidence. “Now leave.” He did not want to fire the couple. Especially because he needed Chris’ reports to destroy the Breach.

That was when Lee came forward. “You should have realized as well.”

Yakov’s face fell, clearly shocked. “Excuse me?!” he screamed, but Lee did not even flinch.

“You supervise Ranger compatibility through the fight system. But I’ve checked and there are no reports on the Crispino twins written. Neither by you or Park Min-so.”

“They are twins. All twins are drift compatible.”

“The Appeal to probability. Typical.” Lee sneered, holding his ground. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Yakov exploded, his patience already beyond thin.

“Lee is referring to a common error in inductive thinking.” Chris interjected “I think he’s trying to tell you you shouldn’t have assumed that all twins are compatible just because a pair of incompatible ones has never appeared. There had been less than two hundred tests on twins. That is not early enough to confirm this theory. The Crispinos are an outlier.” 

“You should have  _ checked  _ their compatibility before you sent them out into the field,” Lee said with a sneer, “Sir.”

Yakov opened his mouth to defend himself, but no sound came out. No thought came to his head, other than a rush of shame and anger.

He guessed that was what Masumi felt, as well.

“Fine then,” Yakov conceded. “What do you suggest we do, then?” He asked, glancing at the three people there.

Chris was the first to talk, now more relaxed, acting more like himself: “Let Masumi-chan keep his job.”

Masumi came next: “Find a new Chief for J-tech.”

Seung Gil spoke last: “Find new pilots.”

Yakov sighed. Obvious enough replies, but he had been refusing to admit so. He sighed, leaned back on his seat. He pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded.

“Fine then, leave.” he barked, and in a quick shuffle of feet they were off, the Giacometti couple holding hands, clearly glad they were not going to be separated soon, while the Korean one scowled darkly.

The Chief matter was a complicated one. He would have to contact Cialdini first, to see whether it was possible to have him back earlier. After all, if there was no Breach, there would be no need for a Mark VI.

The search for a pilot… Well, he could always contact the Katsuki-Nikiforov Academy, but they needed to be ready soon. They needed to have enough people ready to deploy if a Kaiju attacked the next day.

No, the Academy would not do. 

It was time to get Leroy.

  
  



End file.
